Blush

by Cherry Adair

  “Oh, I wasn’t criticizing, it’s just—” Criticizing. Crap. “I really appreciate what you’ve been doing around here, and you’re way too valuable for me to lose you to heatstroke.” Shit, that didn’t sound any better. “I like you, Daisy. I don’t want you to get sick.”

  Feet in clean but worn tennis shoes, pressed together, Daisy sat very straight, her hands clenched in her lap.

  Mia took her time pouring the tea into two ice-filled glasses, enjoying the smell of fresh paint and the green smell of newly mown grass drifting in on the muggy air coming through the open windows and doors. Out in the hallway, Cruz was up on the ladder. It was sweaty work. His strong back flexed as he wielded the roller. She appreciated the fact that he liked wearing as few clothes as possible in this heat. Sweat gleamed on his skin, making it look like polished satin. She couldn’t get enough of him. She wanted to run her tongue up the grove of his spine, then bite him. All over.

  Turning back, she carried the glasses to the table. “Let me know if it’s sweet enough,” she told Daisy cheerfully as she sat down.

  Daisy curled her fingers around the base of the glass and gave Mia a small smile. “I’m sure it’s exactly right.”

  Mia realized that with better care and the aid of a few Blush cosmetics, the other woman would be pretty and look years younger. Now she just looked worn to a nub and absolutely exhausted. Used up.

  For once, Mia was at a loss for words—especially now, when diplomacy was called for. She needed a moment to formulate exactly how to approach the delicate and serious matter, and got up again to get the plate of cookies.

  “He didn’t eat them all. But that’s only because I hid half the batch. Yay for us.” Sitting down again, she pushed her closed computer aside and made busywork of lining up a small stack of folders nearby. “I’m teaching myself to do things I’ve never tried before.” She gestured toward the folders, the small stack of DVDs. “Baking seems to be pretty easy. It’s scientific. Proportions, measurements, chemical reactions . . . Do you like to cook?’

  Daisy smiled slightly. “We like to eat, and Marcel never did take a liking to being in the kitchen. Woman’s work. Men like their dinner on the table at six, don’t they?”

  Mia circled her drink with both hands. “I don’t really know. And honestly? I wouldn’t care. If he wanted dinner at a certain time, I’d tell him to make us both dinner at six.”

  They shared a smile.

  When Daisy started to lift the full glass, she grimaced, then quickly dropped her hand back into her lap and subsided against the chair back.

  “Daisy, do you need to go to the hospital?” Even for Mia, the statement was too direct, but she was afraid subtlety would be lost on the other woman if she was dealing with what Mia suspected she was.

  Daisy’s shoulders remained hunched, hands tightly clasped in her lap. “No, miss. Thank you for the tea, but Marcel needs me to help him outside.” Muddy brown eyes rose to meet Mia’s. “If you don’t have work for me inside . . .”

  “Daisy, is Marcel hitting you?” Mia said flat out.

  Daisy looked appalled at the suggestion. “Marcel loves us. He’d never hurt us.”

  It was a lie. Mia didn’t need a psychology degree to tell when someone was prevaricating, and in the brief moment when Daisy lifted her head to make eye contact, the bruise on her check, badly disguised by sweated-off, wrong-color makeup, was so pronounced that Mia felt a wash of fury rush through her at the obvious lie. The other woman didn’t have a black eye, yet—but her lids were swollen, that eye bloodshot.

  “Daisy, come and stay here with me,” she said with quiet urgency. “You and Charlie. He can’t hurt you here.”

  Daisy’s fingers clenched and unclenched. “You don’t know me. Or him.”

  I’ve seen bullies in three-piece suits wearing that exact same look on their faces before they rip into a weaker opponent. Fists or wiles. A bully was a bully. Mia covered the other woman’s hands with her own and said gently, “I don’t need to know you to want to help you.”

  Daisy abruptly pushed away from the table, and Mia’s hand dropped to her own lap. “My hands are dirty, I’ll wash them outside. I have to go.”

  “If you change your mind about me helping you, will you come to me?”

  “I’ve been married for ten years. Marcel is a good man. He loves us.” Back stiff, she walked to the door, then turned. Every tense line of her thin body showed that she was braced for something unpleasant. She dragged her gaze up to Mia’s face with obvious effort. “Are you going to fire us?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  Daisy’s shoulders relaxed some. “Thank you, Miss Mia.”

  A few minutes later, Mia watched her crouch gingerly to pick up the shrub clippings off the ground. Latour was nowhere in sight.

  “He’ll hit her again,” Cruz told her grimly, coming to stand behind her chair. He didn’t touch her, but she felt the heat of his body and instinctively leaned back, her hair brushing his belly. He smelled of clean sweat and paint. It was an awesome smell, manly and industrious, and it made her girl parts want to dance.

  “Well, I’m going to figure out a way to make the son of a bitch stop.”

  He placed his hands on her shoulders, and the weight and strength was strangely comforting. “You can’t stop a man like that with threats, and you can’t harbor them here. Offering her help will only make it worse for her in the end. He’ll find her and the kid and take them back home, then he’ll teach them not to run sniveling to someone else for help.”

  Mia turned her head to look up at him. “Are you talking from experience?”

  His eyes grew hollow, dark. “My father whaled on my mother for years. He was a bully and a coward, but no one could stop him from getting to her. Not that anyone really tried, but no one would have been a roadblock. He did whatever the fuck he wanted with impunity.”

  She got to her feet. Her heart, already pounding uncomfortably from the conversation with Daisy, beat harder at his shuttered expression. Mia put her hand over his heart and felt the solid, steady flub-dub beneath her fingers. Looking up, she met his dark gaze. “Did he ‘whale’ on you, too?”

  “Until I got big enough to stop him from fucking with both us.” He shifted so her hand dropped away. Mia curled it into a loose fist at her side.

  “You mentioned your mother left when you were very young . . . ?”

  “She didn’t leave. She died when I was fourteen. I could never prove it, but I think he beat her to death, then shoved her over the balcony to the pool deck to cover his tracks.”

  The coldness in his voice made the small hairs on her body stand up. Was her young son the one who’d found her?

  “God—”

  “Had fuck-all to do with it. Not sure where He was when she needed Him.”

  Filled with empathy he wouldn’t appreciate, Mia merely said, “Did the authorities suspect him?”

  “His best friend was the police commissioner, and he played golf with three senators. He knew their mistresses and their under-the-table deals, so no. They didn’t ‘suspect’ him. I was the only one not fooled by the face he showed to the world. He supported a dozen charities, and was a big supporter of the police and firemen’s funds. He was a sick fuck, and bad to the bone.”

  Oh, Cruz. She’d never heard anyone tell such a gut-wrenching story with such an impassive expression on his face. Her heart hurt for him, and tears stung the back of her eyes. “Is he still alive?”

  “He was murdered when I was around eighteen.” He said the words without emotion, without flinching, without revealing anything about what his father’s murder meant to him. The absolute stillness with which he held himself—the abyss of darkness that suddenly filled his eyes—chilled her.

  “Murdered? That’s terrible.” She met his eyes. “Did you kill him?”

  “Can’t say the thought didn’t cross my mind three times a day. Never caught the guy. Rumor had it someone put a hit on him.”

  Mia noted th
at he didn’t deny it. “As in a contract killing?”

  “Yeah, that’s what the cops believed.”

  “And did you think the same thing?”

  He held her gaze. The dark void became even deeper. The gravity in his expression told her that she’d never know everything he knew about his father’s death. Did she really want to? “He had one of the largest construction companies in Chicago. He was unscrupulous, dishonest, and had a lot of secret enemies, had the cops bothered to look. They didn’t.”

  He touched her cheek, and Mia wanted to nestle her face in his palm. As it happened, he didn’t leave it there long, just long enough to leave a phantom imprint. “If I don’t get the rest of that paper off the walls out there, I’ll never get the painting done.”

  She wanted to tell him there was no hurry. But, of course, he might have places to go that didn’t involve having incredible sex with her and scraping off wallpaper.

  He turned to leave. “Let the Latours work out their own issues, Mia.”

  “I’m surprised you can say that after your own childhood. Wouldn’t you have been grateful if someone had stepped in?”

  His face went tight. “What difference would it have made? I was right there, and I couldn’t help. She refused to leave him. He refused to stop abusing her. In the end he killed her.”

  “You were a child. Powerless. I’m not a child, and I have resources she doesn’t have. I’ll put them at her disposal.”

  “Leave it alone.”

  She wasn’t going to leave it alone. As soon as she had a sensible plan of action, Mia would deal with Marcel Latour, one way or another. “Leaving it alone is an interesting suggestion, but one I’m not going to take.”

  “You shouldn’t take on other people’s problems,” he told her unsympathetically. “You’ll only make their lives worse.”

  It occurred to her that this man did not know her at all. That had been okay until last night. Sex on the stairs had been just sex. Perfect, lust-driven sex. What had happened after they’d showered, though, and what had happened throughout the night had been as close to making love as Mia had ever experienced.

  This man, who had held her for hours throughout the night—who’d made love to her again, and again, each time more tenderly, more completely—knew nothing about her. And whose fault is that? She had no one but herself to blame.

  She wanted Cruz to know her. To see her. When they walked away from each other, as she knew they eventually would, she wanted him to know exactly who and what he was walking from.

  “I can handle Latour, but how would you know that?”

  He shrugged. “I guess I wouldn’t.”

  “I need to fix that. There are things I need to tell you.”

  “I’m standing right here.”

  “No.” She glanced at the couple standing close together outside in the garden. Latour was leaning forward, Daisy making herself as small as possible. Mia forced herself to look away, because if she didn’t, she’d go out there and interfere. Big-time. “When the Latours leave. This is important.”

  “Do I need a shirt and tie for this conversation?”

  Mia slid her arms around his bare waist. His skin felt hot and smooth as she lifted herself up on her toes to kiss him lightly on the mouth. “No,” she said, dropping her arms, moving back to the table. “But it’s a keep-your-pants-on kind of conversation.”

  • • •

  Cruz fielded an irate call from the person who’d hired him. Assured him/her he was still looking, and would find Amelia in due course. He coldly informed his employer that he didn’t need to be checked up on and he would notify him/her when the job was done, then he disconnected.

  He hadn’t meant to tell her anything about his past. None of her business, and dangerous as hell to share confidences in his line of work. He’d never done that before.

  Foolish, but then, who was she going to talk to in the depths of Louisiana?

  After a quick shower downstairs, he detoured to grab a couple of glasses and her preferred chilled pinot grigio. Carrying the glasses upstairs, he shoved open her bedroom door. “When am I going to see you on that stripper pole?”

  She’d dried her hair into a sleek, sophisticated style and applied cosmetics to make her eyes look piercingly blue and mysterious. Dressed in white shorts and a blue-and-white-striped top, she looked cool and fresh and delectably sexy. “It’s an exercise pole.”

  “As long as you exercise naked, I want a front-row seat.”

  She took a glass from him. “Thanks.” Indicating the two upholstered chairs she’d dragged out onto the long balcony that ran across the back of the house, she stepped outside and sat down, cradling her wine.

  Cruz flicked off the interior light so as not to attract insects, but also so they weren’t sitting ducks on the balcony. He followed her outside, pausing to look out over the dark trees and water. There was unseen danger out there. Animals, for sure. He didn’t sense human eyes, but he was alert to any unnatural sounds. The evening had cooled some—high seventies, he figured. Comfortable.

  The sound of insects chirruping and clicking accompanied the occasional splash from the dark waters of the bayou. The damp air smelled delectably of tuberoses.

  The reflection in the dark window beside her gave him an interesting front and side view. She had a patrician profile he hadn’t really noticed before. Caressing the bowl of her glass, she waited as he dropped into the other chair.

  Whatever she was about to tell him, she was nervous. He wanted to lean forward and cover her fingers with his. To tell her whatever the hell it was she thought would piss him off, or scare him off, he’d heard and seen it all. She believed he’d killed his old man, and she was still sympathetic to the kid he’d been. What she hadn’t figured out was that he’d grown up at sonic speed. He didn’t need her sympathy.

  He crossed one bare foot over his ankle as he leaned back. “I feel as though I’ve been called into the principal’s office.”

  Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I bet that happened a lot.”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said dryly. “I was a pretty good kid. At least for a while.”

  “I wish . . .” She didn’t complete the thought. He could practically hear the gears and pulleys in her agile mind turning.

  “You’ve never been anything but direct with me. What’s going on? What’s so important?”

  She drew in a breath. Let it out slowly. “I haven’t been completely honest with you. I haven’t lied exactly, but I’ve kept something important from you, and I want you to know. . . . My real name is Amelia Wellington-Wentworth.”

  He’d waited too long to kill her. Way too long. He knew her now. Killing her was off the table, and he knew it.

  Her hands went up to her hair, as if she wanted to pull it away from her face. Something he imagined she’d done unthinkingly before cutting it. Her hands dropped to her lap. “I’m the CEO of Blush Cosmetics. I live in San Francisco, and I’ve been hiding out here for a few weeks because my security people think someone is trying to kill me.” She paused, presumably to give the information time to sink in. “They’re trying to figure out who and why.”

  His pulse quickened when he heard that Amelia and her cohorts at Blush knew there was a hit on her. He’d been hired after she left for Europe. He’d looked for her there, followed her circuitous route back to the United States. Tracked her to Louisiana. She’d had five aliases in two months.

  All he’d been paid to do was kill her. Why she was living in a decrepit plantation, trying out cookie recipes, dancing on a goddamn stripper pole, and fucking her handyman were tangential issues that hadn’t mattered to his end goal.

  He drank his wine, wishing it was a single malt instead. “I imagine a CEO of such a large company has a lot of enemies.” Even a handyman would know the name of Blush Cosmetics. It was synonymous with cosmetics and health care products and was international. Only someone living on a deserted island would be oblivious.

  “I didn
’t think so, but apparently I was wrong.” She shrugged her slender shoulders and took a fortifying sip of wine, lowered her glass, then brought it back to her mouth for another sip. “At this level there are plenty of false friends and true enemies,” she said prosaically. “When you’re vulnerable, you can never let your guard down. And I let my guard down.”

  She had cause to be cynical, but since he’d made no attempts on her life, he had to wonder who had. Perhaps he wasn’t his anonymous client’s first choice. Had his employers come to him after another contractor failed to take Mia out? Was that why his deadline had been set so precipitously, and his hiring so close to a fixed deadline?

  It was a damn good thing they weren’t playing truth or dare. Because if Amelia knew the truth—that he’d been the hit man sent to kill her—she never would have let him in the front door, let alone into her bedroom with the stripper pole.

  Cruz crossed his ankle over the opposite knee and leaned back, assessing her. She didn’t sound or look spooked about having someone trying to kill her. Annoyed, yeah. But not running scared.

  She should be, damn it. She had no business telling him—a perfect stranger—any of this. Well, maybe they weren’t strangers, exactly. She might trust him with her body, but she had no basis to trust him with this kind of information.

  “What made your security people suspect someone was trying to kill you?” And when?

  “Apart from the regular threats a beauty-based business gets from animal rights groups, activists, and the like?” She indicated the seven-inch scar on her upper arm with her wineglass. “This. Someone took a potshot at me from the building across the street from our Blush headquarters seven weeks ago. If I hadn’t shifted to close my laptop, the bullet would have struck the back of my head.” She took a sip of wine. As she swallowed, she squeezed her eyes shut.

  “You were damn fortunate someone didn’t take into account that movement.”

  “The bullet shattered the window behind me. It sounded like a bomb exploding.” Her eyes were dark, glassy, lost in memory. Cruz imagined that this shocked, frightened look couldn’t have been much different the night she was shot at. “The sparkling shards of glass looked like a waterfall breaking over me. It seemed to happen in slow motion, yet it was over in the blink of an eye. Weird and surreal.”